


For as Long as You’ll Have Me

by HazelBeka



Series: Families are Found in the Strangest of Places [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Anbu Hatake Kakashi, Discord: Umino Hours, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Light Angst, M/M, seals master Iruka, the Mizuki incident
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:54:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23520388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HazelBeka/pseuds/HazelBeka
Summary: Families protect each other. Iruka lies in a hospital bed after using his body as a shield, and his two most precious people each vow to protect him in the future too.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi & Uzumaki Naruto, Hatake Kakashi/Umino Iruka, Umino Iruka & Uzumaki Naruto
Series: Families are Found in the Strangest of Places [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1692475
Comments: 66
Kudos: 903
Collections: The Umino Hours Quarantine Boredom Buster





	For as Long as You’ll Have Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [callaina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/callaina/gifts).



Even in the small hours of the night, the hospital room was never entirely quiet and never entirely dark. The door was shut, but the sounds still made their way through the cracks: the trundle of the medicine trolley, the low conversations of nurses passing by, and the quiet beep of machines in the nearby ward. The light from the corridor spilled through the glass panel in the door, and the moonlight came in through the open window, along with a breeze that fluttered Iruka’s loose hair against his cheek. He closed his eyes and tried to ignore the crick in his neck from lying on his stomach, but sleep did not come.

His back hurt. No matter what drugs they pumped into his body, they could never completely erase the pain. It was a quiet burning, deep in the bone, although the blade of shuriken had missed his spine. By two inches, the doctor had said. She’d said a lot more, but Iruka hadn’t been listening. The pain dragged him back again and again to the impact of metal in flesh. Funny, but it hadn’t hurt going in. It had been like a punch, the impact knocking him forwards, but there hadn’t been pain, not at first. All he’d felt with the shuriken deep in his body had been a sense of relief.

Naruto was curled up on a chair beside the bed, sleeping. Iruka had sent the nurse for a cot, but by the time she’d brought it, Naruto had already fallen asleep, and neither of them had had the heart to wake him. The moonlight fell across his hair, picking out strands of pale gold and making them shine. Iruka stretched out an arm, and just reached to brush the tip of a finger against his cheek. The boy didn’t stir, and Iruka let the touch linger before resting his arm back down on the bed.

A movement at the window made him look up. There was an ANBU outside, pulling the window open wider, and Iruka lifted his head, relieved to see him. His armour clinked gently as he climbed inside and lowered himself to the floor.

Hound started to speak, but Iruka raised a finger to his lips and pointed at Naruto. He beckoned Hound round to the other side of the bed, and with some small effort lifted himself enough to shift his position and face the other way. He knew better than to try to sit up, and Hound crouched beside the bed to bring himself down to Iruka’s level.

In the three years since they’d first met, that rainy summer day, Hound had come in and out of Iruka’s life. There were times when Iruka would see him almost daily, patrolling past the school as Iruka arrived in the morning, playing with Naruto in the afternoons, and turning up at Iruka’s living room window sometimes late at night to talk quietly until Iruka could no longer hide his yawns. At other times, they could go days or weeks without seeing each other. Iruka liked to think that Hound was away on missions during these lonely times. That’s what he always told Naruto, although he never knew for sure. He barely knew anything about Hound’s life. But he’d known that Hound would come to see him in the hospital. Hound might be more mystery than man, but the three of them had become a strange little family of sorts. When Iruka needed him, Hound would be there. That’s just how family worked.

“Sorry I couldn’t come sooner,” Hound said quietly.

“That’s all right. It’s not like I was going anywhere.”

“Are you comfortable? Do you need anything?”

Iruka shook his head.

“It isn’t too bad in here,” he said. He gave Hound a searching look, though the mask was unreadable. “They wouldn’t tell me who paid for the private room.”

“Really?”

“Strangely enough, the nurse told me that someone had added me to their private healthcare plan. That if I ever end up in hospital, I get all the perks.”

“Huh.”

“It’s been that way for a couple of years, apparently. But she couldn’t tell me who had set it up.”

“Someone who cares about you,” Hound said. “If I had to guess.”

Outside in the corridor, someone walked past, their footsteps tapping against the linoleum floor. And then they were gone, and it was quiet again.

Iruka moved his hand out from beneath the thin sheet, hesitated, and then slid it towards the edge of the bed. There was a moment of nervous waiting, and then Hound rested his own gloved hand on Iruka’s, lightly at first, almost shyly, palm to palm, lining up the heels of their hands as if measuring the difference. His fingers were long and thin, his hand ever so slightly larger than Iruka’s, and his glove was cool from the outside air. Iruka dared to stroke his thumb against Hound’s, butterfly soft, and Hound threaded his fingers through Iruka’s with a questioning gentleness that took Iruka’s breath away.

Behind him, Iruka heard a soft shifting from Naruto, and Hound raised himself up enough to look over Iruka’s shoulder. Neither of them let go of the other’s hand.

“He’s still sleeping,” Hound said.

“Good,” Iruka said, so softly that Hound had to lean a little closer to hear him. “He’s been through a lot tonight.”

Hound nodded, as if he already knew, and Iruka wondered suddenly what had kept him away the last few hours. It had been ANBU who had taken Mizuki once Naruto had subdued him. Hound hadn’t been there – even in his half-conscious haze of pain, Iruka would have known if he’d been there – but who knew which ANBU would have questioned the man who’d tried to kill the jinchuuriki?

“He’s not the only one,” Hound said, glancing at Iruka’s back. The bandages were hidden by the light sheet he was lying beneath. “I never thought I’d see the day you were caught without a barrier seal.” He was trying for a light tone but there was a thread of worry under it.

“I wasn’t,” Iruka said. “I had three in my pocket.”

Hound stared at him, and Iruka could guess at his expression beneath the mask. Surprised. Confused.

“There wasn’t time to use them,” he explained. “There wasn’t time to think at all. Only act. And I know, there were a thousand different, better things I could have done, but Naruto was right there in front of me, in danger. My body moved all by itself. And I don’t regret it,” he added fiercely, lifting his head to stare defiantly at Hound. “I’d do it again if I had to.”

“I know,” Hound said softly. “I know you would.”

“Mizuki told him,” Iruka said. He had a lot of reasons to be angry tonight, but that was the one he kept coming back to. He could deal with the betrayal, with the wound in his back, but the expression on Naruto’s face still haunted him. “He told Naruto about the kyuubi.”

As quickly as it had come, the fight went out of him. He was too exhausted to sustain his temper, especially when Hound was rubbing his thumb in soothing circles over the back of Iruka’s hand. 

“Do you think we should have told him sooner?” Hound asked, and Iruka was further softened by that ‘we’. That two-letter acknowledgement that Naruto was their shared responsibility and no one else’s.

“I don’t know,” Iruka said. They’d had this conversation many times, about when and how to tell Naruto who he was, who his parents had been, and Iruka had never been sure what was best. Had been worried that the truth would damage Naruto no matter how they handled it.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” Hound said, and Iruka started to protest that he couldn’t have possibly known, but Hound spoke over him. “Not just tonight. All the other times when he’s asked you questions, when he’s needed looking after, when he’s been upset. I could have done more. _Should_ have done more.”

“You’ve done what you could,” Iruka said. He squeezed Hound’s hand gently. “He told me about the money that turns up in his account every month. And I’ve seen the homemade bentos he brings to school sometimes.”

“It’s not enough.”

Hound was sitting straighter now, his shoulders tense, and Iruka got the feeling that every thought coming out of his mouth had been sitting in his head for a while.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you something,” Hound said. “I’ve kept putting it off. I don’t know why. I wasn’t sure how you’d take it.” He glanced away, and Iruka was suddenly worried.

“What is it?”

Hound was still looking towards the foot of the bed, and Iruka wished he could see his face, to know what expression lay under the mask. He had never seen Hound’s face. Instead he had learnt to read Hound’s mood from the way he held himself, the slight inflections in his voice, and whether he carried the scent of spices from a home-cooked meal or blood.

“Hound?”

Hound turned back to him. He had one dark brown eye, Iruka knew, the right one – the left was always closed and the most Hound had said about it was that ‘it doesn’t work so well anymore’ – but in the darkness of the hospital room, even that was hidden in shadow.

“This is the last time you’ll ever see me as Hound,” he said.

He could have reached into Iruka’s chest and grasped his heart and it would have felt the same. The pressure was painful, and Iruka gripped Hound’s hand, pulling it towards him in some childish instinct to keep him there, as though he might vanish if Iruka let go.

“What do you mean?” he asked, the panic making his voice too loud.

Hound shifted closer, until he was pressed against the mattress.

“It’s all right,” he said at once. “It’s all right, Iruka, I’m not going anywhere. That’s not what I meant. But the next time you see me, I won’t be wearing this mask anymore.”

Iruka stared at him, understanding but not sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing.

“You’re quitting ANBU?”

“That’s right. ANBU…isn’t right for me. Not anymore.”

Iruka shifted towards him on the mattress. They were very close to each other. He was still holding Hound’s hand so tightly that he could feel a heartbeat, though he wasn’t sure if it was Hound’s or his own, or both, beating in perfect synchrony.

“Will I know it’s you when I see you? I don’t want you to be a stranger.”

“I’m already a stranger,” Hound said. “You don’t know my name. You don’t know anything about my life, who I am when I’m out of the armour.”

“I don’t care!” Iruka said. “I know _you_.”

“Not enough. I want you to know me better. And…” He glanced over Iruka’s shoulder again. “I want to be here for Naruto. Properly. I can’t do that as ANBU. But I can if I’m his jounin-sensei.”

He sat very still, watching as Iruka absorbed that. Over the past three years, Iruka had learnt a lot about ANBU. He knew how strict its law of secrecy was for its members, and that Hound had just broken the rules for him. Iruka had seen a list of the jounin-sensei that would be taking the students from his graduating class, but they hadn’t yet been assigned their genin teams. He couldn’t place a name to Hound yet, but as soon as he saw the final match-ups, he’d know.

“How can you be sure you’ll have Naruto on your team?” he asked.

“Because that was my condition to Sandaime-sama. I’d teach, but only if he gave me Naruto. I guess he wanted me out of his hair because he said yes.”

It was perfect. Iruka relaxed back into the mattress, but Hound didn’t back away, still pressed against the side of the bed. He’d been worrying about Naruto’s future once he left Iruka’s class. The village was still a hostile place for Naruto, and even the jounin-sensei couldn’t be counted on to treat him fairly, but Hound would. Of all the people in Konoha, Hound was the one person Iruka trusted to hand Naruto over to.

“Really?” a small voice piped up behind Iruka. “Hound, you’re gonna teach me?”

Iruka stiffened in surprise.

“Naruto? How long have you been awake for?”

He heard Naruto get up from the chair and pad around the end of the bed, glancing at Hound’s hand in Iruka’s but showing no reaction, as though it was an expected thing. Hound shifted a few inches back, uncertain but not letting go. Naruto sat beside him, rubbing sleepily at his eyes and stifling a yawn.

“You woke me up when you came in through the window,” he said to Hound, and Iruka bit his lip, trying to remember what they’d said when they’d been talking about him and Mizuki.

“You should have said something,” he scolded lightly. “It’s rude to eavesdrop.”

Naruto just pulled a face and turned back to Hound.

“You’re really going to be my jounin-sensei?” he asked. “Really really?”

“That’s right,” Hound said. He sounded surprised by the enthusiasm.

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

“Awesome,” Naruto said, and yawned. He looked at Iruka. “But you can still teach me too, right?”

“There’s nothing I can teach you that Hound can’t,” Iruka said, a little perplexed.

“I want you to teach me to make barrier seals,” Naruto said.

Iruka and Hound exchanged a look, both mystified.

“I’ve tried to teach you seals before,” Iruka reminded him. “You said it was boring. Remember?”

“I don’t want to learn all the hard stuff,” Naruto said. “Just how to draw a barrier seal, and how to make it extra strong.” He struggled to repress another yawn, but it didn’t dent the determined look in his eye.

“I can teach you if you really want me to,” Iruka said. “What’s brought this on all of a sudden? Why do you want to learn now?”

“So I can protect you,” Naruto said simply.

Iruka was speechless. He didn’t know what to feel. He wanted Naruto to know that _he_ was the one who should be protecting Naruto, that nothing like tonight would ever happen again, but he couldn’t get the words out. They weren’t the most important words anyway, because beyond his worry, his shock, his fear, there was a wellspring of much deeper emotion. No one had told him they wanted to protect him since his parents had still been alive. No one had gone through pain like Naruto had suffered tonight and come out the other side thinking of him, wanting to stem his pain more than their own.

“Naruto,” he said, and his voice cracked.

Hound finally let go and moved back, and Naruto came to take his place, leaning over the bed and hugging Iruka very gently, resting his cheek on top of Iruka’s head and wrapping his arms around Iruka’s shoulders. Iruka couldn’t hug him back, face-down on the bed as he was, but he rested a hand on Naruto’s shoulder and squeezed with as much love as he could convey through touch.

“I won’t let anyone hurt you ever again, Iruka-sensei,” Naruto said into his hair. “You’ve spent all this time looking after me so now it’s my turn to get strong and look after you.”

Iruka was trying very hard not to cry. Stupid, really, that he could be hit in the back with a fuuma shuriken and not shed a tear, but with a few words and a hug Naruto could make his eyes water.

“You’re stealing my thunder, Naruto,” Hound said. “Here I thought I’d be looking after both of you and it turns out you’ve already got it covered.”

“You can help,” Naruto allowed, raising his head but keeping Iruka tight in his arms. “So when do I get to see your face?”

“I’m not sure about that,” Hound said, “but you’ll meet me without _this_ mask soon enough.”

That was an odd comment to make. Iruka thought it might have been a hint, but he was too emotional to give it much thought.

He’d gone through something truly awful tonight, but somehow it didn’t feel that way. The two most important people in his life were both here, both already making plans to keep him safe in the future, and their presence made Mizuki’s betrayal seem smaller in the grand scheme of things. Yes, it would still hurt in the morning, and yes, it would take time to heal, but he wouldn’t have to go through it alone. And that made all the difference.

He reached a hand out past Naruto, and Hound moved closer to take it again.

“Will you stay with us for a little while?” he asked.

Hound settled himself against the side of the bed, and Iruka allowed himself to think of what this might be like when the mask was gone. He’d imagined it a thousand times but never dared dream that it might come true.

“For as long as you’ll have me,” Hound said.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a prompt fill for the lovely callaina <3 I think this hits on several of the prompts you gave, and was specifically inspired by the idea that Naruto wants to learn seals. And also Umino Iruka Needs a Hug. Naruto always delivers on that point, he doesn't like to brag but he's pretty good at hugs.
> 
> This story takes place in the same universe as one of my barrier seals oneshots, so I've created a second series to link them together. Will there be more found family fics in this series? I hope so. I'd certainly like to write more in this verse.


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